


One Step Forward

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 04:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6785452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lorraine struggles with a relationship that's newer than everyone seems to think and a job that's suddenly more important than she's always thought. (And she could do without everyone judging her car, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step Forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fredbassett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/gifts).



> For fredbassett, rather after her birthday. *g*

 

It was already raining when Lorraine Wickes arrived at work, a steady drizzle from steel-grey skies that promised more of the same, and lots of it. Lorraine patted herself on the back for having had the sense to check the forecast and not cycle in - not that anyone could have missed the Met Office's dire warnings of wrack, ruin, flood and high water, or the doom-laden announcement that the Thames Barrier had closed in the small hours of the morning, and stood ready to close again. Particularly not someone like Lorraine, who paid close attention to the news.

 

Most people who paid close attention to the news, however, were probably not crossing their fingers for no anomalies, or (if anomalies had to happen) strictly land-bound creatures. Lorraine felt vaguely queasy when she thought how far a sufficiently determined plesiosaur could get under heavy flooding, or a plague of ammonites, although she conceded that the Great British Public could probably explain away some of the smaller fish all by themselves. There was precedent for the re-emergence of unexpected fossil fish, anyway.

 

She arrived at her desk, exchanging a cordial but cool nod with a technician she disliked who happened to be monitoring the ADD, booted up her computer, and set to work on the day's tasks. She had lined up the contingency plans designed specifically for heavy rain the evening before, before she'd left work; now, since it really was raining cats and dogs across the country, she set to work ensuring that if it rained dire wolves and sabre-toothed tigers the ARC would be able to respond, no matter how bad the conditions.

 

She was just putting the last few people on standby when Jenny arrived in the office, looking efficient, elegant and slightly damp.

 

"Working breakfast," Jenny explained, taking off her raincoat and hanging it from the tree in the corner of their office. "Ugh. Cooked breakfasts at half-past seven in the morning, and _why_ the Clarendon serves black pudding -"

 

Lorraine refrained from saying that she knew about Jenny's working breakfast because she'd set it up. "How was it?"

 

"Good," Jenny said fairly, taking a seat at her desk. "I think we have a good, solid working agreement with the _Times_ and the _Guardian_ by now, despite everything, but the _Telegraph's_ editor has the soul of a tabloid journalist, so I'll need to work on that one."

 

"I thought you went to school with her," Lorraine observed, turning her attention to a slightly more proximate to-do list than flood contingency planning: dealing with the everyday litany of complaints, meetings, scientific advances and feuds that the ARC bred like an overheated petri dish, especially when Lester was away.

 

"That's how I know," Jenny said. "I'll send you my notes. How's your morning, thus far?"

 

"Flood planning." Lorraine read an email chain from three angry botanists and pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. She started to compose a general reply referring them to specific paragraphs of the ARC's Health and Safety manual, along with previous rulings on the keeping of office plants and prehistoric exotica, and finished with a remark that just because you could breed Cretaceous-era lilies with modern ones didn't mean you should, and Lorraine was therefore not going to accept complaints against the cleaners who had binned the plants in question.

 

"You did that last Friday," Jenny said, and heaved a huge despairing sigh as she scrolled through her emails. "Oh my God, I'm banning Anna Cheong from Twitter."

 

"Scientists get overexcited," Lorraine reminded her, "and yes, I did it on Friday, but now it's actually raining." She considered her email, re-read it, and sent it, before forwarding a copy of her remarks to their head of department, and writing a brief commendation for the cleaners in question, who had followed biohazard procedures to the letter.

 

By half-past nine, Lorraine had hacked her way through a number of unnecessary emails that had come into Lester's inbox overnight, sent two memos around the ARC, and organised next week's fire drill. There had been no anomaly alarms, but Jenny was wrestling with an enterprising radio reporter's spirited attempt to fight Censorship and The Man and (going by the muffled swearing) finding it heavy going, so Lorraine got up and offered to make some tea.

 

"Oh God yes, please," Jenny said, hitting the space bar on her keyboard vindictively, and the phone on Lorraine’s desk rang.

 

Lorraine grabbed it.

 

"Oh, Lorraine," Lester said, to Lorraine's considerable surprise. "How are the assembled rabble?"

 

"All of them tortoises," Lorraine said, recalling this month's code-phrase, instituted after the fourth person had accidentally rung a direct line to the ARC when they were actually trying to order takeaway.

 

"Well, slow and steady wins the race. I have a request."

 

"I thought you probably did, sir," Lorraine said, sitting back down at her desk. She had no idea what Lester wanted exactly; he had been at a conference since yesterday, one which even Lorraine's increasingly impressive security clearance only permitted her to know bits and pieces about. She had a clear idea of the information Lester had needed prepared for it, because she'd done that, and she knew where he was, when he was expected back, and the identity of the soldier who had acted as escort, but that was all. And at least half the reason she knew Blade Richards was shadowing Lester was that Blade Richards was her boyfriend. Lester had apologised for borrowing him.

 

Jenny scribbled _Lester?_ on a Regus-branded pad of paper and held it up. Lorraine nodded.

 

"Yes, and I'm afraid it's a little onerous."

 

Lorraine shut her eyes and swallowed the sigh that rolled up from her lungs. "Is it, sir?"

 

 _What does he want?_ Jenny wrote.

 

Lorraine scribbled _I don't know_ on the top leaf of a pad of Post-Its and tossed it gently into her colleague's lap.

 

"I need the full files from the Didcot Incident," Lester said, apologetic but firm, and Lorraine leant back in her chair and frowned.

 

"Aren't those hard copy only?" she said, perfectly well aware that they were. The incident in question itself had not been hugely notable – the ARC had managed to deal with what Ryan termed ‘evil chicken bastards’ and Connor Temple termed ‘phorusracos’ with reasonable aplomb. However, the fact that it had taken place on current MoD (and former Special Operations Executive) property made it interesting, and the fact that it explained the disappearance of several SOE personnel during World War II made it particularly so. Some of the papers they had left behind were still classified for reasons of national security, and there were layers upon layers of reasoning for why nobody had ever gone back for those papers that might embarrass several people still active in their profession. Hence the hard-copy-only rule.

 

The team had also earned a mild rebuke for breaking into MoD property, but Lester had successfully argued that containing the evil chicken bastards had been imperative. Lorraine had had the pleasure of displaying one to various highly-placed individuals in the security services, none of whom were easily startled, but none of whom had never seen a prehistoric creature before. Let alone one that smelled so evocatively and was plainly hopping with fleas.

 

“Yes,” Lester said almost apologetically. “That’s why I said it was onerous. I need you to bring them here.”

 

“Was the précis insufficient?” Lorraine said rather blankly. She’d gone through the papers to write her summary only the other day, and had been satisfied with her work.

 

“Several people want to discuss the incident more fully,” Lester said, which – to Lorraine’s mind – meant ‘yes’.

 

“And you want me to bring them personally?” Lorraine said, and then shook her head. The ARC didn’t have that many people with the requisite security clearance. “No – of course.” She brought up the weather forecast and stared at it. It promised heavy rain, and the orange flash of a flood warning shone at her from the corner of the screen, though the forecast was imprecise; the extremely discreet hotel where Lester and his colleagues were staying was at the foot of the Malvern Hills, and not as likely to flood as might have been supposed. “I… see there are flood warnings near where you are, sir.”

 

Lester hummed in grim agreement; he seemed resigned to her having to come, but not wholly pleased about it for her sake. “Get someone to come with you. I’m not asking you to drive alone in this.”

 

            “I would hope not,” Lorraine said, trying to refrain from sarcasm.

 

            “Exactly,” Lester said dryly.

 

            Lorraine pulled her notebook towards her and ran her eyes down her to-do list, wondering what she could jettison. “When do you want me there?”

 

            “How soon can you get here?” Lester said baldly.

           

            “… I see,” Lorraine said weakly, mentally crossing out all of it. “Perhaps four hours.”

 

            “As fast as you can, Miss Wickes.” There was a short pause. “I do apologise.”

 

            “I’ll see you then, with the files. Is there anything else you need?”

 

            “No, Miss Wickes. I’ll see to it that this is remembered when your overtime is calculated.”

 

            Lorraine restrained a snort of disbelief. Lester’s usual approach to paying overtime was Scrooge-like in the extreme. “Thank you, sir.”

 

            She ended the call and put her head into her hands for a few moments while Jenny stared at her; then she got up.

 

            “Where are you going?” Jenny asked, evidently bursting with curiosity.

 

            “Worcestershire,” Lorraine said, tugging her suit jacket into place and pulling the lanyard with her security pass over her head. “By way of the secure file depository. And the kettle.”

 

            “Oh my God,” Jenny said, sounding suitably appalled, and then ruined it by adding: “Rather you than me. Anything I can do?”

 

            “Find someone on the roster to accompany me?” Lorraine asked, rubbing her temples. “Someone who’s on shift and has had a break recently, drives well in bad conditions, and isn’t egregiously bad company? And then tell them they’re accompanying me to Lester’s conference and I hope they have enough spare clothes in their locker.” She reconsidered. “We could probably stop at theirs on the way. For the right candidate.”

 

            “O-kay,” Jenny said, and then nodded. “Yes, I can do that.” She hesitated, and then gave Lorraine an unusually roguish grin. “There is one upside to this, isn’t there?”

 

            “What?”

 

            “You get to see your boyfriend?” Jenny prompted.

 

            “Oh,” Lorraine said, rather blankly, and refrained from saying that she managed to make time to see him without being forced into an awkward, constrained meeting by unreasonable demands from her employer and his peers. “Yes. I suppose.”

 

            “Romance is dead,” Jenny said, shooing her out of the office. “Go and get your files.”

 

 

            Lorraine found Lyle down by her locker, which was only a surprise in some senses. Jenny had told Lorraine who she’d picked out when she got back to the office with two cups of tea (one much smaller than the other, and doomed to end up going cold on her desk anyway), and Lorraine had approved the choice, keeping to herself any thoughts about other people really wanting to see their boyfriends. She wasn’t sure whether she’d find it easy to get along with Lyle for such a long period of time, but she didn’t know most of the soldiers well at all, and she had enough faith in her professionalism that she thought she could get through four hours in a car with his notorious sense of humour without making a sincere attempt to drown him. He was probably the best of a less than ideal bunch, considering that there were very few people in the world Lorraine was prepared to spend four hours in a car with.

 

            So Lyle’s _presence_ wasn’t a shock, but Lorraine was quite surprised that he knew where her locker was. Surprised and vaguely unnerved.

 

            “Got everything, Miss Wickes?” Lyle asked.

 

            “Almost,” Lorraine said, setting down the laptop bag she was carrying – which would have seemed amazingly tough to anyone who picked it up and had a proper look, and which had a discreetly locked zipped inside pocket - and opening her locker. She had a packet of biscuits in the bottom, under a single emergency paperback and a canvas bag containing a complete change of office clothes, and she took these out and piled the book and biscuits on top of the clothes before slinging her bag over her shoulder.

 

            “So we’ll be stopping at your flat on the way,” Lyle guessed, eyeing up her selection with an air of experience.

 

            “Not necessary,” Lorraine said.

 

            “We might be gone for a couple of days,” Lyle told her.

 

            Lorraine closed and locked her locker. “I’ll be fine. Do you need to stop somewhere?”

 

            He shook his head, kicking the battered leather carry-on bag on the floor at his feet. “I’ve got a change of clothes, and if they’re expecting black tie they’ll just have to live without.”  


            Lorraine felt a spark of cold anxiety, but consoled herself that even if there was some sort of formal event going on, she could always excuse herself on account of not having been invited. “Well, let me assure you that I’m at least as well prepared.”

 

            “I should never have doubted you, Miss Wickes,” Lyle said, with great solemnity.

 

            Lorraine suspected him of mocking her, but still led him to her car, a small city runaround which he eyed rather dubiously.

 

            “If you have a better idea, I’d like to hear it,” Lorraine said tartly, putting the laptop bag in the footwell behind the driver’s seat, her handbag in the footwell of the front passenger seat, and the biscuits in the space in front of the gearstick before going to open the boot.  


            “I’m wondering if it might be a better idea to take a bigger car,” Lyle said, slinging his carry-on bag into the boot of her car.

 

            “I haven’t got one, lieutenant, and we can’t take one of the ARC’s operational vehicles.” Lorraine hesitated, but reached for the small case that lived in the boot of her car and opened it anyway. It didn’t contain anything incriminating; it was just that its existence was usually considered a bit odd. And sure enough, as she tucked her canvas bag of clothes into the spare space in the lid’s case she felt Lyle watching her with sharp eyes.

 

            Maybe it was just that his interpretation of the word _can’t_ in her last sentence was a little more flexible than hers might have been. Well, it was perfectly true that she couldn’t authorise a requisition like that automatically, and it was also perfectly true that the roads were open to ordinary traffic – and in any case, Lorraine wouldn’t be wholly sorry if she had to turn back. It would be a pity to let Lester down, and a pity not to see Blade, but Lester knew perfectly well she couldn’t work miracles and Blade would probably be just as keen to avoid awkward scrutiny of their relationship as she was.      

 

            She got into the car, and waited for Lyle to join her.

 

            “I do have a bigger car,” Lyle volunteered, and then grimaced as he had to shoot the passenger seat back about a foot. “It’s in Hereford.”

 

            “Where I’m sure it’s very useful, lieutenant.” Lorraine pulled out of the parking space.

 

            “I know,” Lyle said ruefully. “Call me Lyle, Miss Wickes.”

 

            “You can call me Lorraine, if you like,” Lorraine offered, turning on the radio. She hoped Lyle didn’t mind Radio Four; he was about to hear a lot of it. And she might be persuaded to compromise when they got on to the weird serials, but she wasn’t giving up on Women’s Hour or the news, especially not given the shifting weather situation.

 

            “Lorraine.” There was a short pause as Lorraine drove out of the ARC’s car park and into the steady rain outside, reaching the end of the small discreet side road that gave access to the main road and waiting for an opportunity to turn.

 

            The pause ended as Lorraine turned out onto the main road.

 

            “Were you expecting Lester to call?” Lyle asked, mock-casual, leaning against the window of her car. Lorraine only hoped he didn’t have his feet on her handbag.

 

            “I was hoping he wouldn’t,” Lorraine said, because it was mostly true, and started navigating towards the M4, crossing her fingers that the traffic – and the rain – wouldn’t get any worse. And that Lyle wouldn’t ask too many more questions about the fact that she kept a packed case in the back of her car for no good reason.

 

           

            The traffic did not get worse. The rain did, a thick steel blanket of needles pouring down, soaking the road and everything on it. Lorraine’s knuckles grew pale on the steering wheel, and she felt the car uneasy on the wet surface of the motorway; she had already slowed almost to a crawl compared to her usual motorway pace, which adhered strictly to the speed limit at all times. The motorway was increasingly empty, people shying away from the poor conditions, and Lorraine felt as if she could see only blurs of red and white lights through the water washing across her windscreen.

 

            They had been on the road for two hours, and it felt like eternity. Lorraine was reasonably good at reading people – it was a professional skill she’d expended a lot of effort learning – and she could see Lyle getting steadily more uneasy in the passenger seat. She’d distracted him by getting him to call Lester and give their ETA at first, but that only took so long, and Lorraine’s worry that he was judging her driving was feeding inexorably into her existing anxiety over her ability to handle the conditions. It was beginning to show in her driving.

 

            She squinted at a sign and made out the symbol and information for a motorway services centre. “I think we might stop for some petrol,” she said, keeping her voice cool and steady. “And a chance to stretch our legs. Maybe we should switch drivers, too, I’m not used to driving in these conditions.”

 

            “That’s why I’m here, Lorraine,” Lyle said, then paused. “If I’m driving, can we listen to something other than Radio Four?”

 

            Lorraine blinked. “Of course,” she said. Women’s Hour had given way to the news, and then to a programme about illuminated manuscripts, which Lorraine found soothingly tuneable out, instead of nerve-gratingly annoying, like the serials that usually played after the eleven o’clock news. “I mean – I stopped noticing it. If you don’t like it, you can change it, of course.”

 

            Lyle grinned. “I now know a lot more about Lindisfarne Island than I did half an hour ago.”

 

            “That might come in handy one day,” Lorraine said, trying to be amusing, and then she saw the exit for the motorway service station and changed lanes, suddenly desperate to be parked and out of the rain.

 

 

They took a brief break at the service station, which was small and grubby and full of complaining people; the ladies' loos were similarly small and grubby, but Lorraine made her way to the front of the queue with all due patience and was back in the main station by the time Lyle had started to look as if he wondered where she was. He was carrying two bottles of water and some snacks, and he nodded at her as she appeared.

 

"Might want to grab something to eat," he said. “We could be driving for a while.”

 

Lorraine's stomach rumbled, and reminded her forcibly that breakfast had been a long time ago. She flushed, embarrassed; she hadn't noticed herself getting hungry while she was driving, too wound up and tense. She nodded in return, and turned her attention to the plastic racks of crisps and sweets next to gossip magazines, the glass shelving sweating with condensation where the sandwiches, wilting salads and drinks were kept. None of it looked hugely appetising to Lorraine in her present nervous state, and the crush of noisy people around her only made it worse, but she chose a few things and joined the queue to pay, stepping over a toddler throwing a messy, screaming tantrum on the grimy floor.

 

She felt almost glad to get back out into the rain, replace the laptop bag in the footwell - Lorraine had a very healthy fear of ending up in one of those news stories about careless civil servants and politicians leaving papers lying about where they could be stolen or photographed, so had carried it with her - and face the road.

 

"Right," Lyle said, sliding the driver's seat back six inches and strapping himself in. "Let's see how far we can get."

 

 

Thanks to diversions, it took a further two and a half hours and three deviations from Lorraine's meticulously planned route, but they still made it to the hotel in one piece, pulling through the iron gates and up the palely gravelled drive just as the light was growing dim. The country around them was sodden, brown rivulets rushing across roads, fields growing fat and plashy with the rise of the water-table, drenched policemen and locals going door-to-door, sandbag barriers being built. They’d had to stop again at another motorway service station, hashing out the best route forward over bad coffee and their snacks; Lorraine was a reasonable navigator, but absorbing so many rapid changes to the route on the fly while the water levels rose was a little beyond her.

 

"I see a ministerial photo-opportunity waiting to happen," Lyle had remarked, steering around a young policewoman stoically carrying her own weight in sandbags across the road. The road itself was not running with water, but they could see water spilling out of the drain grates.

 

"Surely they'll go somewhere richer," Lorraine had replied, eyeing the pebble-dashed houses and slightly sad-looking primary school. "Handier for the cameras. There was a town back there with a constituency office next to the Waitrose and some very clean four-wheel drives."

 

Lyle had laughed. He had stopped laughing when a policeman had waved them over and asked where they were going, and told them to take an alternative route because the bridge they needed was piled high with brushwood and debris coming downstream, and consequently closed to traffic. But the alternative route had worked, and here they were, drawing up to the front of the hotel next to a large number of cars that had once been shiny with polish, and were now shiny with rain. Lorraine counted the Mercedes, and felt a bit defensive of her tiny, mud-spattered Peugeot.

 

 _Maybe I should have requisitioned an official car_ , she thought, and then remembered all the dreadful things that could have happened that would require the ARC to have all their vehicles to hand. It was possible some of them were happening right now.

 

She checked her phone. If dreadful things were happening, nobody had told her, which was inconsiderate, because if they had done she could have slipped quietly into a side room under the pretext of organising a response to the dreadful things. Instead, she put a small smile on her face, picked up her laptop bag, and stepped out of the car.

 

"Mr Lester," she said calmly, meeting her employer on the broad stone steps of the hotel. "I'm sorry we're a little later than anticipated."

 

"I'm amazed you arrived at all," Lester said, eyeing her car.

           

Lorraine tried not to bristle, and then caught her boyfriend's eye, standing behind her boss. Blade's lips twitched slightly, sympathetically - of course, he'd been tolerating Lester's sense of humour up close for a day and a half now, and unlike Lorraine, he couldn’t escape to a different office - and she couldn't help the rueful half-smile that slid onto her face. "We arrived," she said. "That's the important bit." She held out the laptop bag. "The Didcot files. Where should I put my car?"

 

"Knowles will take it," Lester said, nodding at a man in an identikit black suit with a small, discreet brass name-tag on one lapel, who inclined his head to her and held out a hand.

 

“You’ll find Lieutenant Lyle has the keys,” Lorraine said apologetically. “If you'll just let me take my case and handbag out."

 

"Of course, miss," Knowles said smoothly.

 

Lorraine walked back to the car and met Lyle, who was already holding her case in one hand and had his carry-on slung over the other shoulder. "Almost," Lorraine said, retrieved her handbag, and took possession of her case. Knowles moved smoothly past them both, and slipped into the driver's seat.

 

Lester led her and Lyle into the hotel, and Blade shadowed them. A handsome William and Mary building in red brick with pale detailing and deep sash windows, the interiors were lighter and paler than Lorraine might have expected; besides the heavy wooden panelling polished to a high gleam, the thick carpets on wooden floors were deep sage and the walls were studiedly tasteful shades of oatmeal, light green and sand, interrupted frequently by pleasant landscape paintings, surrounded by ornate gold frames. There was a quiet sense of luxury, and a stillness that spoke of discretion and extremely well-trained staff. They passed doors which were open a crack, and someone could be heard giving a lecture of some description, someone else having a quiet but not hushed conversation.

 

Lorraine, sensing an environment in which not a few eyes were on her, tried not to tense up too obviously. Apart from anything else, she was clearly supposed to be listening to Lester.

 

"- there is just _one_ small problem," Lester was saying.

 

"Oh?" Lorraine said, rendered deeply suspicious by the way that Blade was staring fixedly at a painting of ships out to sea on the landing above as they climbed the stairs.

 

"There are no spare rooms," Lester said, apologetic but not too apologetic - so he must have thought of some kind of solution.

 

Lorraine got a firm grip on her countenance.

 

"There's the double that I'm sleeping in, and the twin that Corporal Richards has been using."

 

Lorraine redoubled her grip on her expression and did not look at Blade.

 

"So I've told the staff that the two of you will be sharing the twin," Lester concluded, "and they've put an extra camp-bed in my room for Lyle."

 

 _Camp-bed_ indeed, Lorraine thought, feeling rather frozen. She would have put the chances of Lyle actually sleeping on that camp-bed as slim to Loch Ness Monster. "I see," she said aloud.

 

"I know it's not ideal, but you can always push the beds together," Lester said.

 

"Of course," Lorraine said calmly, doing her best not to defrost and give away more of her personal business than she intended.

 

They arrived on the first floor. "Well," Lester said. "Corporal Richards knows where to find his own room, so - we'll leave the two of you to it."

 

A grin flickered across Lyle's face. Lorraine gave him her coldest stare.

 

 

            Blade said nothing until they were inside the room they’d been allotted. Lorraine dropped her handbag on the bed which looked as if it hadn’t been slept in, and laid the laptop bag on the dressing table by the window. She left her case at the foot of the bed she’d claimed, and looked around her.

 

            It was a nice room, she thought. The walls were the oatmeal she’d seen elsewhere, which she preferred to the beige sand colour. Heavy curtains were pulled back from a wide window that looked down onto the drenched gardens, and there was a small, nicely-appointed ensuite bathroom. There were individual lamps by the beds, and a tray with a kettle and tea and biscuits on top of the chest of drawers. The beds themselves looked surprisingly broad for hotel singles, comfortable with thick duvets and plump pillows.

 

            Lorraine swallowed, and tried to think of something to say.

 

            “I’m sorry,” Blade said, before she could think of anything, and she turned, surprised. He was sitting on his bed, fidgeting with a knife. “I didn’t know what to say to Lester. He assumed we were sleeping together. I thought you wouldn’t want me to say anything.”

 

            He looked at his feet, and Lorraine could see a vague flush creeping up the back of his neck. Her own face was burning, but she knew it wouldn’t be as visible on her darker skin.

 

            “You weren’t wrong,” she said ruefully, and then paused. “I – really hate it when people assume things.”

 

            They’d only been dating a few weeks, and they hadn’t been able to make time for more than a few dates. The fact that several people at the office knew had been the result of a small slip, a piece of bad luck – Lorraine had been called back into the office when she was out with Blade last week, and she hadn’t thought fast enough to lie to Jenny about where she’d been. After that, the news had spread, and several people had presumed that they’d been dating – and keeping it quiet – rather longer than they actually had been. A number of occasions when they’d really been out with friends or away had been chalked up to the two of them sneakily spending the night together, or even taking a weekend away, and neither of them had known how to counter it without multiplying the rumours. Everyone had just assumed they’d been together for several months at least.

 

            After all, they were _so good_ at keeping secrets, and Lorraine would _never_ have let anything slip by accident.

 

            Blade nodded. “I won’t… Look. We can try not to make this awkward?”

 

             “Yes,” Lorraine said, seizing this olive branch. She took a step towards him, and caught herself, surprised – then decided to go with it, and walked tentatively over to him, stopping just outside his personal space.

 

            He looked up at her, set down the knife he’d been fiddling with, and stood; suddenly, he was almost looming over her. She kept forgetting how tall he was.

 

            “Hi,” he said. He curled his fingers gently around hers, and his mouth twitched. “I’m glad you’re here. I just… I don’t want you to feel like…”

 

            “Like what?” Lorraine twined her fingers into his, and smiled up at him, a little helpless, a little stupid. “Nobody’s going to know what happens here, except us. And this time I’ll keep my mouth _shut_.”

 

            “It was an accident,” Blade said, rolling his eyes at her. He’d been much less annoyed than she had been, except for a brief – and still wholly inexplicable to Lorraine – wobble, when he’d thought she wouldn’t want to go out with him once their fledgeling relationship became public knowledge.

 

            “It was stupid,” Lorraine said, with some feeling, and edged a little closer to him. “We can do what we like. Just… let’s take it as a chance to spend time together. Forget what Lester and Lyle think.”

 

            “Yeah,” Blade said very quietly, but he was smiling. His free hand landed on her waist, a little hesitant, and Lorraine smiled back.

 

            She leaned up slightly and kissed him, then withdrew, suddenly half-panicked, in case – in case of something – but no, he followed her. His hand on her waist moved to the centre of her back, his lips confident on hers, and she let her grip tighten on the hand tangled up with hers, let her free hand go to the nape of his neck, her thumb slide over that small soft space just beneath his ear.

 

            This was easy, Lorraine thought, and her eyes slid shut. This made sense. This was what she kept coming back to, whenever she wondered what she was doing with him, how long he would want her around; it was so easy to be around him, and he touched her like he wanted her next to him. She thought she would have slept with him weeks ago, if they’d had the opportunity, but their dates had been snatched moments, and she had trouble letting people in on the basis of – well, snatched moments. And there’d been a new awkwardness in the way they moved around each other, now that people knew; Lorraine, at least, felt watched, which she hated. And Blade was always tense and uncomfortable when people teased him about her, which Lorraine thought meant he felt the same way.

 

            There was a knock on the door. Blade’s hand on her back clenched in the soft material of her blazer for a moment, and then he let her go with an irritated huff. “I’m going to fucking murder Lyle,” he murmured.

 

            “Miss Wickes,” Lester’s unmistakable voice said, from outside their door. Both of them twitched in surprise.

 

            “That’s not Lyle,” Lorraine murmured, equally quietly, and stepped reluctantly out of Blade’s arms; she felt cold now, though she’d been perfectly warm before.

 

            Blade made a subterranean noise that indicated he wasn’t wholly pleased with Lester either, and Lorraine went to the door.

 

            “Mr Lester,” she said calmly, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her.

 

            “I trust you’re settling in well,” Lester said smoothly. If he’d tried to peek over her shoulder, he’d given no indication of it.

 

            “Yes, thank you,” Lorraine said. “Let me know when exactly you need the Didcot Files. I take it you need to present them.”

 

            “I don’t need them. You do. You’re going to present them.”

 

            Lorraine leaned heavily against the door, grip tight on the doorknob, and stared at him.

 

            “You heard me correctly,” Lester said, eyes opaque, but then he relaxed a little. “Lorraine, you wrote most of them, what you didn’t write, you collated, and you organised half of the… remediation process the Didcot Incident required. It would be absurd for me to present your work. Absurd and inappropriate.”

 

            “It was my work on your behalf,” Lorraine pointed out, not at all soothed. And she’d only been in charge of so much of it because she’d previously worked in intelligence and she still had connections, still knew who to talk to and what to ask and when to say nothing at all.

 

            “It was _your_ work.” Lester straightened his cufflinks, and then, finally, looked her straight in the eye. His voice dropped slightly, so as not to carry, though the corridor Lorraine’s room was on was both deserted and some way away from most of the action. “Your job expanded beyond that of a minor admin professional a long time ago. You do have the capacity to live up to that, Miss Wickes. This is where you start.”

 

            Lorraine tried not to choke on that. “How long do I have to prepare?”

 

            “Half an hour,” Lester said.

 

            Lorraine stared fixedly at him.

 

            “You’ll be fine,” Lester said. He looked as if he mostly believed this to be true. “Just come downstairs when you’re ready; one of the staff will be able to direct you to the library.”

 

            “I see,” Lorraine said rather weakly, and added: “Thank you for the advance notice.”

 

            “There’s no call to be snide, Miss Wickes.”

 

            Lorraine glowered at him, and Lester looked a little sheepish.

 

            “Well, perhaps –” he said, as one granting a great concession, and then shook his head. “See you in half an hour.”

 

            Lorraine nodded, and let herself back into the room, closing the door with exaggerated delicacy.

 

            Blade set a book he’d been reading aside, slipping it into the drawer of his bedside table. Automatically, Lorraine wondered what it was, and then pushed that thought aside; if he wanted her to know he’d have left it out. “What did he want?”

 

            “He wants me to present the files I brought to a roomful of high-ranking complete unknowns,” Lorraine said, letting her incredulity into her voice. “In half an hour.”

 

            Blade stared at her. “Right,” he said eventually.

 

            “Exactly,” Lorraine said, and felt panic well up in her. She leaned back against the closed door. “Niall, I – this isn’t like leading a meeting at the ARC. I don’t – I have no time to prepare, I don’t know any of these people, I – it’s not even an emergency; I’d know what I was – I don’t have a _plan_ -”

 

            He swung his legs over so he was sitting on the side of the bed closer to her, and held his arms out. “C’mere.”

 

            She took a couple of faltering steps towards him, and then she was close enough for him to grab her hands and pull her down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. She dragged in a harsh, unpleasant breath, and curled her hands into his shirt even though she knew she’d crumple the fabric. The breath felt just as jagged on the way out as it did on the way in.

 

            “You do have a plan,” he said into the top of her head, his voice as level as it always was. “Your plan is go down there, tell them what the team did, tell them why they did it, what you had to do afterwards, and then maybe what you think should be done in the future.”

 

            “None of these people is paying me to have an opinion on what they should do next time,” Lorraine said into the lapel of his jacket. “I don’t have opinions like that.”

 

            He laughed, which made her indignant. “Yeah you do,” he said, and there was obvious affection in his voice. “I heard you ranting at Jenny.”

 

            “I did not _rant_.” Lorraine shifted slightly so her legs weren’t twisted.

 

            “Whatever you did. You definitely have opinions.” He kissed her temple, and she tried not to shiver. “And you have met them before, I think. At least one or two. I saw them earlier, the people who were saying they needed the full files – two of them were definitely people you showed the dead chicken thing. One of them was the one who had to throw up afterwards. You gave him a bin.”

 

            “Oh,” Lorraine said, and wondered why thinking of another person vomiting was soothing. She had no immediate plans to throw up; she was not a nervous vomiter, and whatever happened next, she could at least count on her stomach contents staying in her stomach. “Yes. I remember.”

 

            “You know this stuff,” Blade said, and suddenly sounded very shy. “You’re good at this stuff. You’ll be fine.”  


            Lorraine hummed, not quite willing to concede, and tucked her head under his chin and breathed quietly for a few moments. She was sure she must be getting heavy, and Blade getting uncomfortable, but he didn’t move to let her go, just… held on to her.

 

            It was nice.

 

            “I should probably get up now,” Lorraine said reluctantly, after a few minutes, and he released her. She got to her feet and looked down at him, one of her hands still loosely entangled with his. “Thank you,” she said, and kissed him very lightly on the lips. “Thank you. That helped.”

 

            His fingers tightened slightly on hers, and he smiled up at her like he was sure she knew what she was doing. “Any time,” he said.

 

When he smiled like that, it was hard not to believe him.

 

           

            Lorraine was at the venue for her presentation five minutes early, her face washed, hair re-arranged, make-up reapplied, and her crumpled shirt swapped out for a neat one from her case. The library was not really a library, Lorraine thought; no-one would come here any time they pleased to borrow a book, and there was no lenders’ catalogue. The books were certainly organised, and most of them were real, though Lorraine had spotted at least one tall honey-wooden bookcase that was probably not. They ranged from history to politics by way of ethnography and classical literature, and there was a discreet corner full of detective and thriller fiction – none of it in the garish paperback covers it might usually have been sold in. The shelves reached high, almost to the ceiling, and heavy leather-covered chairs with small round tables beside them occupied the nooks made by shelves. Discreet sockets allowed for the use of laptops, Lorraine noted, but in the end nook – the largest of all, and quite invisible when you entered from the hall – there was a polished table laid out for a meeting, and absolutely no sockets or audiovisual facilities.

 

            Lorraine knew she’d judged it right when she’d left her mobile phone in her room. She also knew that nobody would mind there were no slides to go with her presentation; they weren’t here for slides.

 

            She sipped at the glass of water she had poured herself from the bottle on the table, and flipped slowly through the notes she’d made and the papers they were based on again. She knew the files she was supposed to present on backwards; she’d written them. A quick flick through them in the room upstairs and some scribbled notes, and she’d known what she was going to say.

 

            Someone tapped lightly on a bookcase, and Lorraine looked up. She’d heard them approach, but assumed it was only one of the staff, come to check on the arrangements. It wasn’t. A tall, crane-like man in a slightly ill-fitting grey suit stood there, and he smiled when she looked up.

 

            Lorraine smiled back automatically.

 

            “You must be Lorraine Wickes,” he said, and held out a hand. “We’ve met before, I believe.”

 

            Lorraine believed they had too. This was not the man Blade had reminded her of, the one who had been sick into a bin, but he was certainly one of the few Lorraine had exhibited a dead phorusracos to. “That’s me,” she said, shaking hands with him. “It’s Mr –” _Heron_ , her brain supplied, a beat behind – “Heron, isn’t it? You visited the project I work on.”

 

            “Yes.” Mr Heron set his hands in his pockets. “I don’t remember seeing your name on the list of attendees.”

 

            “I was a last-minute addition,” Lorraine said, disguising her firm belief that Mr Heron would not have remembered her name if he had seen it on any such list. “I brought the papers with me, so Mr Lester thought I ought to present them.”

 

            “That sounds like James,” Mr Heron agreed.

 

            Lorraine smiled slightly, and then a quartet of people arrived – Lester, in conference with a small, plump woman with eyes like diamond drills, trailed dutifully by Blade and someone Lorraine did not recognise, but who looked as if their skillset and CV bore a close resemblance to Blade’s. Blade caught her eye and did not smile, but Lorraine thought she knew him well enough to pick up on a slight softening of his face.

 

            It was possible she was imagining it, but it was comforting, so Lorraine chose to believe she had not.

 

            More people followed on Lester’s heels, and Lorraine guessed that many of them had come from a previous meeting, or perhaps from a coffee break – they seemed a little too bright for it to have been a meeting.

 

            “Ah, Lorraine,” Lester said cheerfully. “Come and meet –”

 

            Lorraine blinked, but obligingly came forward, to be introduced around the group and to give form answers to form questions asked by people who looked as if they were evaluating her. They probably were. Lorraine refused to shrink, and collected names and occupations in her head.

 

            Blade and another two people who had clearly been sent along to keep others out of trouble – one woman, one man, both well-dressed and wearing it as if they had no personal interest in it, neither of them talking – drifted to the side. Lorraine allowed herself to be ushered to the head of the table as the chatter died down a little; people were still talking, but mostly to their immediate neighbours as they sat down. Lester caught her eye and nodded slightly as he took his own seat most of the way down the table, and Lorraine let herself believe that she could do this. If she weren’t capable of it, Lester – always sensitive to circumstances which might prove embarrassing to himself – would be giving the talk himself. She might have been permitted to take minutes on her own work, but Lorraine doubted it. She’d be sitting upstairs twiddling her thumbs and getting increasingly bored.

 

            It was that thought that made Lorraine realise she was better off standing here than she was lurking in the background, and that thought that lent a little confidence to her first words.

 

            “Good afternoon,” she said smoothly, making sure to breathe and not to talk too fast. “As I expect you all know by now, my name is Lorraine Wickes, and I’m a senior member of administrative staff and the inter-organisational liaison for the Anomaly Research Centre, also known as the ARC.” This was all strictly true. Lorraine was the most senior administrative staff member for the ARC, and she did do most of the liaising with other organisations, chiefly because she could be trusted not to swear at them, throw things at them or mortally insult them, and Jenny usually had her hands full with the press. “I am here today to discuss an incident that took place last September at a location near Didcot. While it chiefly involved the ARC, it took place on land currently owned by the MoD and formerly owned by the Special Operations Executive, and due to the incident’s history, several current and former institutions later expressed an interest in the outcome.”

 

Deep breath. Lester was watching her. Lorraine stopped looking at him and started looking at the people she didn’t know. “I believe you are all familiar with the general purpose of the ARC, and I know some of you witnessed the aftermath of this incident, including the creatures retrieved by the ARC. For the rest of this presentation, I will refer to these creatures as terror birds.”

 

            It was a neat compromise, Lorraine thought, between the ‘phorusracos’ favoured by the scientists, and the ‘evil chicken bastards’ preferred by the soldiers. It also had the benefit of being attested in the scientific literature, should any of those present choose to look it up later.

 

            “Some historical background is obviously necessary,” she said, and gave a brief description of terror birds, followed by a short potted history of the site where the ARC had found them, concluding with: “The site is unfortunately now in poor repair, due to the events of last September. More positively, the minefield discovered by the ARC team has now been cleared. Remains found suggest that while the minefield was laid by officials some time in the late 1930s and simply forgotten about, in the intervening decades it has been the locals’ chief protection against the birds.”

 

            Deep breath, and a mental note to slow down a little. The woman standing next to Blade elbowed him in the side – brave woman – and muttered something in his ear that made him crack a smile. It was probably about terror birds or the unexpected minefield; Lorraine wondered how much unofficial gossip he’d been up to. Blade was quite good at that sort of thing.

 

            “On the 14th of September last year, the anomaly team was called out to a location near Didcot,” Lorraine said, took another breath, and kept going. That was all she needed to do.

 

 

            Afterwards, Lorraine found herself at the coffee break, being introduced to even more people, and holding actual conversations with some of them. Her hands were still trembling around her coffee, but she had deliberately not picked up a saucer so it couldn’t clink, and the shaking was easing off.

 

            “You were brilliant,” Blade murmured, checking his footsteps next to her for half a second. “I told you so.”

 

            “Rubbish,” Lorraine said, hiding her face in her coffee, which was too strong.

 

            “Lester’s going around looking smug,” Blade remarked, and slid quietly into an alcove close to where she was standing, stirring a small helping of sugar and milk into her coffee. Lorraine glanced up, and let her eyes flash round the room. From where Blade stood, he had lines of sight around most of the room, and Lester in clear view, talking confidentially with someone.

 

            “Isn’t it obvious, you following him around?”

 

            Blade shrugged, and cut a glance sideways at her. “Yeah, but I think I’m mostly here to drive. And to make sure the sensitive stuff gets where it’s going and doesn’t go any further.” His eyes flicked around the room. “There’s nothing here. Not today, anyway.”

 

            “Hmm,” Lorraine said. “And is that why your colleagues are here? To drive?”

 

            “Mostly,” Blade said, and his mouth quirked. “I think. And they’re not my colleagues.”

 

            “What did the woman say to you? Something about the terror birds?”

 

            “Charteris?” Blade snorted. “No. She said my taste in women had improved.”

 

            Lorraine said nothing, partly out of embarrassment, and partly because she was wondering if Charteris was Blade’s ex-girlfriend.

 

            “You should go and talk to some more people,” Blade said, unexpectedly. Lorraine blinked at him, extremely surprised; Blade was not a chatty person any more than she was, and of all the people to deliver that advice… “Network, right.”

 

            “I could,” Lorraine said, trying the waters in her mind. It didn’t sound like such a terrible idea. She knew she’d given a good presentation. People had been impressed. There had been talk of a best-practice paper, and someone had suggested she sit in on a round table session the next day, as it related to some of the points she’d made in discussion.

 

            “Your hands are shaking.”

 

            “I know.” Lorraine set her coffee down before it could slop everywhere.

 

            “Pretend you’re on the firing range.”

 

            “That seems ill-advised,” Lorraine said weakly.

 

            “You’re always calm when you’re shooting,” Blade told her, with unmistakable affection in his voice. He slipped out of the alcove, and headed back to Lester’s side; the other man had stopped talking to whoever it was who had needed not to be overheard.

 

            _I need a drink_ , Lorraine thought, picked up her coffee again, and went to talk to the person who had raised the most interesting points in the discussion after her impromptu talk. As a mental exercise, she imagined the sort of calm Blade was talking about, the sort of calm she only managed when she was shooting and wholly focused on her accuracy and the metal in her hands.

 

            It helped, she thought; at any rate, she didn’t spill any more coffee.

 

 

            Dinner that evening was a planned, sit-down dinner, and while Lorraine had been incorporated into most plans at short notice, the notice in question had been too short to add an extra place for dinner on the evening of her arrival. Similarly, neither Blade nor the other close protection personnel were invited, presumably because it would be too annoying for the waiters to have to manoeuvre around them, and they were all in the building anyway, provided with panic buttons and – at least, according to Blade – prowling.

 

“I know Charteris is having a good poke round,” he volunteered, looking over the room service menu they’d been given. “And Ford said something about it. I’ll go and have a look later. See what I can see. Which will almost certainly be nothing, but…”

 

Lorraine nodded. She’d taken off her heels and her earrings, which were base metal and starting to ache in her piercings after a long day, and was sitting curled up on her bed; Blade had kicked off his shoes, hung his jacket over the back of a chair, and rolled up his shirt sleeves to expose the knives strapped to his wrists. There was a funny sort of intimacy about it. “What’s Lyle doing?”

 

“Exploring, probably,” Blade said casually. “I told the others he was here so he probably won’t get shot.”

 

“Do you need to look round if Lyle’s already – what, I don’t know – patrolled?”

 

“It’s good practice,” Blade said, without looking up from the menu, and Lorraine knew what he meant; not that he needed to practise, but that it was important that he should do it himself. Instinctively, she approved. “Like your case.”

 

Lorraine choked on her next breath and waited one cold minute to see if Blade’s sentence was about to go anywhere, but he was still going through the menu, and he had said it dispassionately enough that she could believe he didn’t think her behaviour was out of the ordinary. “Lyle must be very bored,” she observed, trying to change the subject.

 

Blade’s lips quirked, but he didn’t disagree. “Brought it on himself.”

 

Lorraine snorted. “Jenny did say he’d volunteered.”

 

“Exactly.” Blade passed her the menu. “I can order, if you want.”

 

“I might not like conversation, but I can pick up a phone,” Lorraine said absently, and made her choice. “Also, I’m closer.”

 

“Point.” Blade reached for the TV remote, turned it on, and started flipping through the channels.

 

“Do you mind if we watch the news when it gets to ten?” Lorraine asked.

 

“No,” Blade said absently, finding a rugby game. “That’s fine.”

 

“What do you want? To eat, I mean.”

 

Blade cast her a slightly puzzled look, as if wondering what else she could have meant, and Lorraine tried not to flush with embarrassment. “Steak and chips,” he answered. “Medium.”

 

“Okay.” Lorraine picked up the phone and ordered – Blade’s steak and chips, her own trout and salad with extra chips, because it had been a trying day – and then picked up the paperback she’d brought with her, a box-fresh copy of _Chalice_ by Robin McKinley, and started to read.

 

The silence was comfortable, but there was a strange tension to it too; Lorraine kept feeling eyes on her, and glancing up to find that either Blade had never looked at her at all or he’d just looked away. She ducked her head back to her book, feeling self-conscious, and then a few minutes later –

 

She caught him at it, once. He didn’t say anything, just smiled, and she smiled back, helpless, confused, and he let his head roll back against the headboard of his bed, still smiling.

 

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said eventually, and Lorraine felt heat rise in her face.

 

“I – don’t mind it,” she said, stumbling. “I mean -  I had things to do this week, but –” she swallowed. “If I have to be dragged into the middle of nowhere on no notice at all… I’m very glad you’re here too. It – yes.” She swallowed again and stared at her hand on the duvet. “That didn’t make any sense.”

 

“It made enough sense,” Blade said, giving her more credit than she was due, and then there was a knock on the door.

 

“I’ll get it,” Lorraine said. “You’ll give whoever’s got our meals a heart attack unless you roll your sleeves down.”

 

When she came back, carefully balancing two trays of food, Blade had taken off his wrist sheathes and left them on the bedside table, which wasn’t much less disturbing if you thought about it.

 

“I didn’t say they bothered me,” she told him, passing him his steak and chips and carefully not thinking about it.

 

He grinned and strapped them back on, rolling his sleeves to accommodate them.

 

Lorraine couldn’t hide her smile.

 

 

The meal was a good one; at least, Lorraine couldn’t speak for Blade’s steak, but her fish was perfectly cooked, and the chips were just right, hot and crisp and perfectly-salted. She finished and set aside her tray, then picked up her book again and started to read. Blade was still watching his rugby game, occasionally hissing in delight or shifting and frowning at the screen if the players did something particularly interesting, but Lorraine didn’t know the game and couldn’t see it clearly anyway. She found herself smiling at her book whenever she heard him curse or cheer though, and she was almost sorry when the game ended and he moved on to a football match, which he obviously cared about much less.

 

At about quarter-past nine, he turned off the TV and put his suit jacket back on. He didn’t bother rolling his sleeves back down, and when he put his shoes on he touched his hand to his ankle, so Lorraine assumed that this was the ‘quick look round’ he’d mentioned earlier.

 

“Back in a minute,” he said, and his eyebrows flickered. “If Lyle sticks his head in, tell the nosy bastard to fuck off.”

 

Lorraine snorted. “And if it’s Charteris or Ford?”

 

“Charteris’ll want a gossip,” Blade said, and grinned at her. “If you want information, invite her in for tea, you’ll like her. Ford’ll probably also want a gossip, but he’s not as much fun and he probably doesn’t know anything interesting to tell you, so you can tell him to fuck off, too.”

 

“Right,” Lorraine said dryly, wondering what exactly made Blade think she would like Charteris; the other woman was far too assured and classically pretty for Lorraine to be at ease around her in a social situation. “See you in a minute.”

 

Blade nodded, and ducked out of the room.

 

Lorraine waited a beat, then got up and took her pyjamas out of her case and went into the bathroom to wash and change, just in case – an impulse that was justified when she heard a soft knock at the bedroom door.

 

She assured herself that there was no-one here who would want to hurt her, and – a point that weighed with her rather more – Blade wouldn’t be so far away by now that he wouldn’t hear her if she screamed. She dropped her pyjamas beside the bathtub, and crossed the room to the door before she could think better of it.

 

“Can I help you?” she said frostily to Lyle, who she found on the other side of the door.

 

“Just wanted to let Blade know I’ve had a look round and everything’s normal,” Lyle said, looking slightly startled, but not so startled that he didn’t try to crane his neck to see past her.

 

Lorraine stepped into the corridor and pulled the door to. “I’m afraid he’s already gone.”

 

Lyle nodded. “Let him know I’m taking the night shift from now on.”

 

Lorraine let her eyebrows raise very slightly. “How conscientious of you.”

 

“Well, I’ve got to do something to keep myself from getting bored,” Lyle said reasonably.

 

Lorraine allowed one eyebrow to twitch slightly and her eyes to narrow, in a fashion intended to convey _or someone_. Two could play at Lyle’s innuendo-ridden game.

 

“Anyway, that leaves you two with the night all to yourselves,” Lyle grinned, either not registering or wilfully ignoring her.

 

Lorraine stared at him, forming her lips into a slight, pleasant curve, and turning her eyes as blank as possible.

 

“I’ll leave you to it. Evening, Miss Wickes,” Lyle said irrepressibly, and sauntered off, whistling a jaunty tune.

 

Lorraine resisted the temptation to throw something after him, and went and ran herself a bath.

 

Blade arrived back when she was towelling herself dry and dressing in her pyjamas, and she hung her towel over the rail and wrapped herself in the fluffy dressing gown provided by the management without fuss or excessive rush before going to greet him.

 

“Anything interesting happening?” she asked casually, and added a demand to know whether he wanted tea, filling the kettle from the bathroom tap.

 

“Please,” Blade said, pulling his shoes off again and draping his jacket over the back of a chair once more. “Fuck all, except there’s a couple shagging in one of the conference rooms.”

 

Lorraine was startled into a laugh. “I hope you didn’t walk in.”

 

“Didn’t need to, they left the door ajar.” He shook his head. “Stupid. Everyone’ll know by tomorrow.”

 

“Lyle dropped by,” Lorraine said, preferring not to comment on gossip about other people’s relationships with her own embarrassing failure of discretion still fresh in her mind. “To tell you he was going to, er – take the night shift.”

 

Blade snorted, and Lorraine could almost hear him holding back a scurrilous remark about Lyle and Lester. He turned on the TV, and flipped through a few channels.

 

“That’s more or less what I was thinking,” Lorraine said, passing him his cup of tea and sitting down to sip at her own, slow, knowing that if she gulped at it she’d burn the tastebuds off her tongue.

 

“There are biscuits,” she added, noting the angle between her and the TV, and wondering if Blade would mind if she came and sat by him to watch the news, if there’d be room for the two of them on the bed. Neither of them was exactly insubstantial, she thought, and tugged nervously at her pyjama trousers.

 

“I’m all right,” he said, and changed the channel on the TV to BBC One.

 

The first chimes of the news theme rang out, and Lorraine sat on the edge of her bed, wondering.

 

He glanced over at her. “Can you see from there?” he asked, a note of doubt in his voice, and some of that shyness that had peeked out earlier.

 

“Um,” Lorraine said, and stared at her tea. The newsreader started to give the headlines, and Lorraine didn’t hear a word.

 

Blade shifted over on his bed. “There’s space. If you want.”

 

Lorraine got up, and crossed the room hesitantly to sit down next to him. He smiled at her, equally hesitantly, and she managed not only to return the smile but to swing her legs up onto the bed. Lorraine’s pulse jumped in her wrists and throat, and she found it very difficult to concentrate on the news.

 

By the time she’d finished her tea she felt a little easier, a little less hyper-aware of him, even when he finished his tea and reached over her, with a muttered apology, to put his mug on the bedside table. She wobbled, caught off-balance on a bed that was really too small for the both of them, and he caught her with a hand on her arm and edged onto his side to give her more space.

 

“It’s a bit small, isn’t it,” she said, half-laughing, and putting her own cup down.

 

He grinned back at her. “Yeah.” His arm had somehow made its way around her shoulders, and that Lorraine could lean into easily, curling slightly into the limited space available, resting her head on his chest. It felt strange not to have an expiry date on the time they spent touching, a bus ride that was going to end, a film that would be over soon; Lorraine was very conscious they could stay on this bed all night if they wanted to.

 

She, personally, did not want to, however much she liked touching Blade. The bed was definitely too small for two of them, and every time she twitched she risked falling off.

 

“You could sit on my lap,” Blade suggested, effectively derailing Lorraine’s attempts to follow the passage of a piece of legislation through the European Parliament.

 

It took several moments for Lorraine to find her words, and when she did they felt clumsy. “It worked earlier,” she said, struggling to hold her composure, and shifted across. He caught her in his arms and settled her so that she was sitting between his legs, her back resting against his chest and her head against his shoulder, and if Lorraine thought she was stiff there was a tension to Blade that spoke of a very self-conscious stillness, like he’d picked up on her lack of ease and was trying not to startle her.

 

“Only if you’re comfortable, though,” she said anxiously, and curled her hand around his, resting deceptively loosely on her waist.

 

She startled something that was almost a laugh out of him. “ _I’m_ \- ? You’re so tense I –”

 

“I’m fine,” she said quickly.

 

Blade absorbed that in silence. “Okay,” he said after several long moments, and turned his face to kiss her cheek.

 

She was fairly sure she believed him – or at least, she believed that he meant it; he was still fairly tense, but then, so was she, largely out of self-consciousness. She let her fingers slide lightly on the inside of his wrist, skimming over the knives still held there, and let her head tip back against his shoulder, and he relaxed a little. Relief flooded through her.

 

“I should probably take those off,” he muttered.

 

“Do what you’re comfortable with,” Lorraine insisted, cursing herself. She hadn’t meant to make him self-conscious about something else. “That was the point – we agreed –”

 

“Right,” Blade said, equally determined, and elbowed her in the kidney undoing the plastic buckles on both wrists and dropping the entire confection off the side of the bed, before winding his arms around her waist again almost triumphantly.

 

Lorraine got the giggles.

 

“What? What are you laughing at?” Blade demanded, grinning himself, and Lorraine was almost crying with laughter right now, and she didn’t quite know why. Maybe it was the way she felt the need to try to micromanage something as simple as curling up with her boyfriend on a bed that wasn’t big enough for both of them.

 

“We are _ridiculous_ ,” she managed to get out eventually, and now Blade’s shoulders were shaking with laughter too, and he ducked his head to kiss the side of her neck and it tickled, so she squirmed and accidentally elbowed him in the stomach as a result. He let out a noise like she’d just kicked him somewhere sensitive that was at least two-thirds exaggeration, and she told him not to be an idiot, and he tickled her deliberately by way of revenge and this time she elbowed him on purpose, and by the time they’d stopped laughing they were both slightly bruised and entirely relaxed, and Lorraine had stopped feeling like the bits of her that were touching him might be on fire despite the dressing gown and her pyjamas.

 

Also, the ten o’clock news had only ten minutes left to run.

 

Lorraine stretched out her legs and let her head loll again, relaxing into Blade’s arms, and Blade made a small satisfied noise and rested his head against hers; when she sneaked a glance up at him, she saw he had shut his eyes. “Comfortable?” she murmured, and got a non-verbal noise of agreement back.

 

“Good,” Lorraine said very quietly, and listened out the last of the news bulletin. She thought she had caught about half of it, and under the circumstances she felt inclined to congratulate herself for that.

 

 

Lorraine slept the night through for once in her life, but woke to hear someone moving very quietly around the room; she was awake in an instant, adrenaline coursing through her, completely unused to someone else in her space. She must have made some kind of noise, because the footsteps changed course, and she started as a hand touched her cheek and a voice she recognised as Blade’s told her to go back to sleep, it was only him.

 

Lorraine did what he said without thinking, and she could still feel his fingertips on her skin when she woke to her alarm in the morning. Blade was already up, clearly freshly showered and largely dressed; she let herself into the bathroom and washed and dressed in there as quickly as she could, changing her trousers for the anonymous aubergine skirt that had been in her spare case and swapping back into the parchment-coloured shirt she had worn on the drive down, now mostly un-crumpled thanks to aggressive hanging in a steamy bathroom. She came back into the room to finish applying her make-up, because now that Blade had opened the curtains the light was better; she found him fixing his cufflinks, and sat down at the dressing table to wrestle with mascara and lipstick.

 

She was almost done when she had a sudden thought, and turned around. Blade was now sorting out his tie, an operation that made him look like he might be about to strangle himself; she got up and waited until he’d finished before putting a hand on his shoulder.

 

“What?” he asked, but not in any unfriendly tone, and smiled down at her.

 

“Just – good morning,” Lorraine said, and kissed him.

 

He made a surprised noise into her mouth, and tucked a hand around the nape of her neck to tilt her head up a little further and change the angle. “Hi,” he said, green eyes alight, when they broke off to breathe. “What brought that on?”

 

“One, you’re here,” Lorraine said, feeling uncharacteristically bold for the early hour. “Two, I can. And three –” she held up the lipstick in her other hand – “plum is _not_ your colour, and this doesn’t really come off.”

 

He grinned, as she’d hoped he would. “Feel free to say good morning like that any time. I can live with the lipstick.”

 

“But I can’t live with Lyle’s sense of humour when he sees it,” Lorraine pointed out. “Isn’t breakfast served in five minutes?”

 

            Blade checked his watch. “Yeah. So Lester will be down in four and a half minutes.”

 

            “Six,” Lorraine said. “You’re forgetting Lyle. We might possibly have time to go and fetch some coffee in peace.”

 

            “Yeah, maybe,” Blade said, and brushed a thumb across her lower lip, making her breath catch. “If you hurry up with your lipstick.”

 

 

Lester and Lyle were both down to breakfast in seven minutes, according to Blade’s count – at least, he muttered “Six minutes and fifty-eight seconds,” in her ear when they appeared, which made her choke on her coffee – and Lyle was, for a wonder, behaving himself. Lorraine was sure he must be getting cabin fever, an active, energetic man mostly confined to a house with little to do, but she didn’t ask about it. Seeing him minding his manners over breakfast was startling enough without being told that he’d located a secret staff poker game or had taken to climbing onto the roof for the fun of seeing how far he could get without being caught.

 

Lester did ask her if she’d slept well, but Lorraine took that as a boilerplate polite enquiry and gave him a bland answer before returning the question. He similarly told her something that meant nothing at all, and asked about her plans for the day.

 

“I thought I might start drafting that best practice paper,” Lorraine said, pouring herself a second cup of coffee. “And I’ve been asked to sit in on a couple of sessions, so I’ll go to those. It should be very interesting, I think.”

 

Lester nodded. “Send me a draft when you’ve finished. You’re going to the reception this evening, of course.”

 

Lorraine stared at him. “Well, if you say so, Mr Lester, I probably am.”

 

Lester nodded, apparently satisfied. “Have you heard anything about the state of the roads at present?”

 

“No,” Lorraine said. “There was an item on the news last night, but it wasn’t specific.” She glanced out of the window, which looked onto an extremely damp garden and overflowing fishpond, but one which was at least not receiving any more rain. “It’s stopped raining, at least.”

 

“We aren’t forecast for any more,” Lyle said. “I checked this morning. We’ll probably be able to leave the conference on time, but it’ll be a slow journey home tomorrow.”

 

Lorraine cast her mind back. The conference was supposed to be approximately three and a half days long, ending just after lunchtime on the fourth day; she had arrived midway through the second day.

 

Lyle glanced at her. “The water might even have gone down enough for your car, Miss Wickes.”

 

“Don’t be rude about my car,” Lorraine said mildly. “It got here.”

 

“To my considerable surprise,” Lester remarked.

 

Lorraine suppressed the desire to roll her eyes, and applied herself to a bowl of fruit salad. Blade’s hand touched hers under the table, and she returned the gesture, feeling slightly less ganged up on.

 

Lyle opened his mouth and then shut it again very quickly, as if someone had kicked him. Lorraine’s money was on Lester.

 

“I should ring Jenny and see what’s happening at the ARC,” she said, getting up with alacrity before Lyle could find a subtler way of phrasing whatever he’d been about to say, and hurrying out of the breakfast room.

 

 

Two of the sessions Lorraine had been asked to sit in on were directly after breakfast; she went straight from a quick phone call with Jenny to those, only stopping to pick up her notebook, and let herself focus entirely on them, blocking out thoughts of anything else with the ease of long practice. They were definitely interesting, and they spoke to aspects of her work that she didn’t always enjoy, but she understood and could hold a competitive debate about. People were still paying a surprising amount of attention to her when she felt confident enough to speak up – which admittedly wasn’t often – and Lorraine found it rewarding, hearing new perspectives. Because of its secrecy, the ARC could be a bit of an echo chamber.

 

She was beginning to take Lester’s point about career development, although she disliked being positioned as somebody’s protégée without ever having agreed to that.

 

After those two sessions, she picked up some lunch from the buffet tables set out in the breakfast room and – when Knowles had assured her that the library was free – took a plate of sandwiches and fruit into the library with her laptop and notes to start work on her best practice paper. It was satisfying work, too, as good as the best and most interesting bits of organisation she got to do at the ARC, and without the downside of having to negotiate other people’s feelings and consider the way they reacted. Nothing about the paragraphs on the page was going to be as stubborn as Professor Cutter, or bumble as much as Connor Temple. She thought she’d have to tweak it for her eventual audience, though. She wasn’t sure where to pitch it.

 

She had an outline, and had just finished the introduction, when Lyle turned up with a cup of coffee.

 

“Thank you,” she said, surprised and pleased, even though it wasn’t made how she liked it. She nudged the armchair next to her, in case he wanted to sit down, and was even more surprised when he took up the invitation.

 

Lyle nodded at her papers. “Is it going well?”

 

Lorraine glanced at her computer screen. “Yes, I think so. I have another session I’m supposed to join in an hour, so I’ll… I suppose I’ll see how far I can get before then.”

 

“Lester’s pleased,” Lyle said straightforwardly. “In case you didn’t know.”

 

Lorraine half-smiled. “Well, I certainly hope so.” She sipped at her coffee. “Are you all right? I would think you’d be bored.”

 

Lyle grimaced. “It’s fine. I walked down into the village earlier – they needed a hand getting in supplies.” He shrugged. “It’s fine.”

 

“Are you coming to the reception later?”

 

“I didn’t bring a suit,” Lyle reminded her. “And I don’t fancy dressing up like a penguin anyway. That’s Blade’s problem.”  


“I think he makes an excellent penguin,” Lorraine said mildly.

 

Lyle grinned suddenly. “Well, so I should bloody hope, the two of you –” He cut himself off equally suddenly, and Lorraine, who had been preparing a deflating remark, stared at him suspiciously.

 

“I’ve been told to go on about it less,” Lyle explained. “Sorry.”

 

Lorraine nodded, and was very grateful that nobody knew exactly how she and Blade interacted when they were alone together, that curious mix of ease and nervousness as they moved each step closer into each other’s personal space. She wished, for the hundredth time, that she had told Jenny some simple and therefore convincing lie, and bought them a few more weeks of working out what stood between them without being _watched_.

 

“Anyway,” Lyle continued, stretching out his legs. “I’m fine. Boredom is character-building.”

 

“Well, let me know when you get to the dangerous stage,” Lorraine said, picking up her draft outline and squinting at something she’d written. “I’m sure I can find a report or two for you to write. In fact, aren’t you behind on -”

 

Lyle was gone before she could finish her sentence. Lorraine tried very hard not to laugh.

 

 

The reception was supposed to start at half-past six. Lorraine, reapplying lipstick and accidentally smudging waterproof black mascara all over her eyelid at quarter past six, felt bitterly as if the day had flown to her least favourite section of it. She had changed into the spare work outfit she had kept in her locker, and was already beginning to feel jittery and underdressed, which made her feel worse about the fact that she was shortly going to have to conduct free-form conversations where somebody hadn’t just handed her an ice-breaker in the form of a round table discussion or a lecture.

 

There was a brisk knock on the door, and Blade let himself in when she called out that he could come in.

 

“You look pretty,” he said, probably untruthfully.

 

“I have mascara all over one of my eyelids and I’ve got one of my heels wedged under the bed,” Lorraine retorted, trying to scrub off the aforementioned mascara. In the mirror, she saw Blade crouch down, locate the aforementioned heel, and lift the bed enough to retrieve it. “Thank you.”

 

“No problem.” Blade deposited the shoe on the dressing table. “I like that dress.”

 

“Thank you,” Lorraine repeated, and smiled at him, even if the smile was worn a little thin. The dress wasn’t anything special, really, just a work dress, slightly smarter than usual because Lorraine worked on the basis that sod’s law meant her clothes would be ruined just when there was someone in the building she needed to impress; dark blue and dark gold and cream and black in a sort of geometric fractal pattern, with simple lines and a neckline high enough to stop her feeling self-conscious.

 

Blade was wise enough not to comment further, and disappeared into the bathroom to wash his face and shave for the second time that day. Lorraine didn’t see the point. The five o’clock shadow seemed to be a permanent fixture.

 

She got the mascara off, smudged her eyeshadow into something that vaguely matched the other side, and replaced the mascara, this time without blinking at exactly the wrong moment. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, conceded that she wasn’t likely to improve on it, and got up to put her heels on; Blade came back into the bedroom in time to offer her a steadying hand, and she leaned on him gratefully.

 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he said casually, eyes on her face like he was looking for a reaction and lit with a certain slyness, “but that dress makes your arse look _great_.”

 

Lorraine got caught between blushing and laughing, and temporarily forgot to be nervous.

 

 

It turned out that receptions were mostly navigable enough, if you confined yourself to _one_ glass of wine, and mostly talked to people you had already met. Lorraine managed to stay in circulation and to talk – for which she awarded herself several mental gold stars, like the stickers her sister and brother-in-law gave her niece for doing chores – and by the time they were all gently shepherded into dinner, she felt almost at ease. But not quite. There were too many traps in the questions she was asked, too many people who wanted to know too much about the ARC, and Blade’s friend Charteris kept grinning at her, which was unnerving. Luckily she’d been seated close to Lester at dinner, and next to Alexander Heron, the first of the conference-goers she had met; it was possible that Knowles was kind as well as efficient. She was even opposite Blade, who stretched out his legs at some point during the dinner so their feet touched. It was… steadying.

 

She could probably have done this without him, Lorraine thought, but it would have been _so_ much more unpleasant, and she felt a small warm sunburst of gratitude take its place somewhere between her ribs. She wondered if she knew how much he was helping, or if it was just a happy side-effect of him being himself.

 

Heron wanted to know all about her work at the ARC. Lorraine applied her brain to saying just enough about it to keep him interested in cooperating with her, without giving him more than he really needed to know.

 

Lester didn’t exactly compliment her on her conduct, but he nodded at her on his way upstairs after dinner ended, and Lorraine could read his expression well enough to know that he was pleased. She didn’t bother to try hiding her smile.

 

Blade evidently felt that Lester was safe enough to get himself back to his room with Lyle without an escort; Lorraine found him at her elbow when she was at the foot of the stairs. He caught her eye, and fell in with her as easily as he fell into step with Lester, half a step behind her all the way upstairs to their room.

 

“Oh, hey,” said an unfamiliar voice behind them, just as they reached the corridor where they’d been put – along, Lorraine suspected, with everyone else unimportant enough for one of the grander rooms.

 

“Evening, Charteris,” Blade said, in a very guarded voice, and Lorraine glanced over her shoulder to see the woman she’d been wondering about, on and off, all weekend.

 

She was grinning at Blade in a deeply unsettling way. She was also wearing sensible shoes and a dress that looked expensive, but also draped enough to hide a lot of weaponry and provide freedom of movement. Lorraine wasn’t quite sure how these balanced each other out.

 

“You could at least introduce me to your girlfriend, Richards, seeing as you’ve met someone worth talking to.”

  
            “Lorraine knows who you are,” Blade said, looking directly ahead of them. “If she wants to, she can introduce herself.”

 

Lorraine stopped at the top of the stairs and held out a hand. “Lorraine Wickes,” she said, and fixed Charteris with the kind of look she usually applied to soldiers who had kicked a football through one of the ARC’s external windows. It was not quite as brutal as the one meant for those who kicked footballs through internal windows, but it certainly implied the possibility of future repercussions. “Pleased to meet you.”

 

Charteris’s grin only broadened, and she shook hands firmly but without trying to intimidate. “Anna Charteris. Believe me, it’s mutual. If you ever want to hear a story or two about Richards here, I’d be happy to provide. He’s not as suave as he looks.”  


Lorraine raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never thought he was especially suave,” she said dryly.

 

“Ouch,” Charteris said, clearly delighted. “God, you’ll do his ego a world of good. Have a nice evening.” She sauntered down the corridor with a wink and a lingering look for Lorraine and a mischievous grin for Blade, and Lorraine let Blade usher her into their room in a state of mild shock.

 

Blade closed the door and they stared at each other.

 

“Do you know her well?” Lorraine said, a little weakly.

 

“No,” Blade said, and Lorraine thought he was telling the truth. “I haven’t been trying to be suave.”

 

“No, I know,” Lorraine said. “It’s just the way you look in a good suit, it’s illusive.”

 

A grin caught at his mouth and something sparked in his eyes, and Lorraine laughed and shook her head, dropping her eyes to stare at her feet in their slightly scuffed black patent shoes.

 

“I thought she was your ex-girlfriend,” she admitted.

 

“What?” Blade said blankly.

 

Lorraine concentrated very hard on the carpet. “The way she was talking to you?”

 

“Lorraine,” Blade said. “Charteris is a lesbian.”

 

            There was a long silence.

 

            “Oh,” Lorraine said, and flushed brick red. “Right.”

 

            “She thinks you’re very pretty,” Blade said. “And clever. And too good for me.” He cracked a smile, and touched her cheek very gently. “She’s not always wrong.”

 

            “Please don’t,” Lorraine said awkwardly, catching his hand before it could drop. “I… She couldn’t be more wrong. About that.”

 

            There was another long silence, this one slightly less awkward.

 

            “Will you get the catch on the back of my dress?” Lorraine asked.

 

            “Sure,” Blade said, seizing this conversational lifejacket with apparent gratitude, and Lorraine turned so he could undo the little hook and eye at the back of the dress. “Do you want a hand with the zip as well?”  
  
            “Please,” Lorraine said without thinking, and shivered when she felt the tip of his thumb and the blunt edge of his thumbnail on her skin. He stopped, and laid his palm flat on her back, over the zip; Lorraine could feel the question he wasn’t asking, and turned her head to smile at him over her shoulder. His hand rested on her back for a second, very warm and very large between her shoulder-blades, and then he smiled back at her and slid his arms around her waist, pulled her back against him; she reached back and curved her palm around the back of his neck, rubbing her thumb along the knots of the vertebrae, and felt him turn his face close against hers. They stood there for a few moments, just breathing, and then Blade let go of her, and carefully drew her zipper all the way down to the end, dress falling open to the small of her back.

 

            “There,” he said unnecessarily. “I’m going to take a shower.”

 

            “But – you showered this morning?” Lorraine felt stupid.

 

            “A _cold_ shower,” Blade said with some feeling, and disappeared into the bathroom.

 

            “Oh,” Lorraine said, feeling completely moronic and deeply embarrassed and strangely like she wanted to laugh at him, and went to change into her pyjamas.

 

 

            Breakfast was quietly awkward. Lorraine had slept badly, and was feeling it; Blade wasn’t feeling talkative either, it seemed, and while Lorraine welcomed the hug she’d got just before they left the room she had an uneasy feeling it meant he knew about her disturbed sleep – a conversation she had hoped to dodge for as long as possible. Lester and Lyle seemed fine, and Lorraine left the conversation in their capable hands while trying to shock herself into wakefulness with the repeated application of caffeine. Never wholly at ease with the people she was around, Lorraine now found herself counting the hours until the conference was over. Luckily, listening to the final speeches didn’t require her to interact with anyone, and by the time those were over all she had to do was survive the lunch. She thought she managed to put up a creditable front, even if she wasn’t doing as well as she had been earlier in the conference.

 

            Lyle, who had been sat next to her – probably in an attempt to keep the slightly ad-hoc ARC delegation together; Lester and Blade were opposite them, Blade enduring the reminiscences of someone sat on his other side who had once been in the Royal Engineers with professional patience - leaned over to talk to her. “I’d eat up, if I were you.”

 

            Lorraine glanced at her plate. It was mostly empty; she raised an eyebrow at Lyle, meaning to convey that she didn’t understand why her eating habits were any of his business.

 

            “I checked the route home,” Lyle explained. “No more rain, but half the roads are flooded out – it’s going to be a very long trip back.”

 

            “Ever the optimist,” Lester sighed, before Lorraine could collect herself enough to respond to that. “Stop bothering Miss Wickes and pass the mustard, Jon.”

 

            Lyle shut up and passed the mustard. For about the fifteenth time, Lorraine wondered what glue held that relationship together.

 

            She had packed in the morning, so after lunch it was a simple matter of going upstairs and collecting her bags; Blade met her at the door, having escaped from his conversational partner with some difficulty, since Lyle had unilaterally decided that he would drive Lester home and deprived Blade of his excuse to leave the table.

 

            “Any ideas where my car’s been put?” Lorraine asked, pulling her coat on.

 

            Blade nodded. “I asked Knowles on the way up.” He picked up his own bag and slung it over his shoulder, then held out a hand for her case; Lorraine let him take it. “Do you want to take turns driving?”

 

            “Please,” Lorraine said, remembering the drive up with some distaste. “I’m not very good in wet conditions.”

 

            “You should do a course.”

 

            “No thank you,” Lorraine said with dignity, buttoning her coat.

 

            Blade cracked a smile. “I could teach you.”

 

            “That I might accept.” Lorraine sneaked a glance at him, and her own smile caught from his, like sparks in kindling. “Do you know if Lester’s waiting for us, or have they just gone?”

 

            “Waiting in the hall,” Blade said. “Or at least, that was what Lyle told me.” He paused, and Lorraine, hand on the doorknob, paused too. “Lester wants to meet to discuss the conference, but not today.”

 

            “It had better bloody not be today,” Lorraine said, sagging against the door. “I honestly thought for a moment he’d planned some kind of – I don’t know.” She shook her head. “He can talk about it all he likes, provided he starts with an apology for dragging me out here.”

 

            “You enjoyed some of it,” Blade pointed out, and then frowned. “I think.”

 

            She smiled at him again, and this time she thought her tiredness showed. “I did.”

 

            “Come on,” he said, quite gently. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, yeah?”

 

            “Let’s,” Lorraine said, and let them both out of the room, locking it behind her.

 

           

            The drive home was quiet. The solid grey clouds had not dissipated, only stopped pouring with rain, and Lyle had been right; they had to detour repeatedly to get back to London, skirting flooded roads and damaged bridges. Because the water had still been rising when Lyle and Lorraine arrived at the hotel hosting the conference, the case was easily as bad as it had been when they’d driven up even though the floods had started receding. Towns and countryside alike looked depressing; Lorraine catalogued soaked shops and drenched homes, fields with great reflective pools of standing water, people in waders sloshing through the rivers that had washed up to their front gardens.

 

            They were back on the motorway by three o’clock, and Lorraine was able to switch out with Blade and drive her own car for once. They traded off at roughly hour-long intervals as the light died, and when six o’clock came round they joined the traffic jam in to London and Lorraine turned on the news.

 

            “You wouldn’t think it would be so bad coming in,” Blade muttered, leaning forward in the seat he had pushed right back to achieve some form of leg room and peering at the traffic ahead.

 

            “It’s the M25,” Lorraine said, easing her foot on the clutch. “It operates according to laws of its own.” She glanced over at him and hesitated long enough that she missed a slight movement forward in the traffic, causing an impatient man in a Porsche to honk his horn and flash his lights at her. She gritted her teeth and edged the car forward all of six inches, and laid a hand on Blade’s knee; he’d twisted in his seat and was glowering at the driver. “Let it go. Everyone’s in a mood.”

 

            He turned back to face front, and caught her fingers in his for a moment before releasing them so she could – finally – change up into second gear. She smiled, and then remembered what she’d wanted to say before they’d been interrupted. “You live in Hammersmith, don’t you?”

 

            Blade nodded. “Yeah. Overstone Road.”

 

            “I don’t know where that is,” Lorraine said apologetically, and focussed on the road ahead. “But probably not a million miles from Putney. Still, it’s been a long day, and… Well, I don’t know if there’s anything edible left in my fridge, but we could get a takeaway in or something, and you’d be welcome to stay.” She coughed, and stared out of the windscreen particularly hard.

 

            “Yeah,” Blade said, and Lorraine could see the smile catching at the corners of his mouth if she looked sideways at him. “I’d like that.”

 

             “Good,” Lorraine said, and this time when Blade touched her hand, she held on.

           


End file.
